A Georgia school comes under fire for assigning slavery-themed homework questions, including: "Each tree had 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?" JGI/Jamie Grill/Blend Images/Corbis

January 9, 2012

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A Georgia school has sparked controversy by giving third-grade students "outrageous" slavery-themed math homework, with questions like: "If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week? 2 weeks?" Several furious parents complained to the school, Beaver Ridge Elementary near Atlanta. "I'm having to explain to my 8-year-old why slavery or slaves or beatings are in a math problem," says one irate dad. Administrators say the questions were just one teacher's "inappropriate" attempt to blend social studies into math homework in a "cross-curricular" experiment. Is there any excuse for treating slavery so lightly?

It's important to teach about slavery — just not this way: "Obviously, there's no good way to write a word problem about slavery," says Carolyn Castiglia at Babble. But we shouldn't ignore this painful part of our history either. Here's a question that might work: "If five slaves were headed north and three also seeking freedom joined them, how many people in total were running for their lives from evil masters trying to chase them down and whip them into submission?""Ga. school uses math problems about slavery"